


Don't stop smiling

by TetrodotoxinB



Series: Bad Things Bingo 2018 [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Beating, Captivity, Concussed admissions of love, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Slash, Square filled: Tortured for information, Torture, Whump, concussion, electroshock, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 13:43:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14895681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: Steve and Danny are in a bad way. The questions they're being asked don't have answers, and the people doing the asking couldn't care less about Steve and Danny so long as they get what they want.





	Don't stop smiling

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Bad Things Happen Bingo to fill the square: tortured for information. 
> 
> So FYI, in case you didn't catch that before there's explicit torture in this. 
> 
> Also, thanks to Dee for pointing out some oopsies. The oopsies that are left are mine.

“Hey, dickhead!” Steve shouts, the rope visibly digging deep into his arms as he leans forward in the chair.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Danny grumbles. “You know,” he says, louder this time. “I can answer his questions myself.”

Steve looks like a dad that doesn’t approve of his daughter’s newest crop top. “Danny-”

“Oye pendejo, callate! Your friend says he can answer me. Don’t interrupt,” admonishes Douchebag Numero Dos (aka Estulio), while brandishing the cattle prod.

“Danny-” Steve tries again, the cavalier attitude beginning to crack around the edges now that their captors’ attention is turned to Danny.

Danny watches as Estulio crosses the room in just a few steps and jams the cattle prod into Steve’s ribs. Unlike the first few times, when Steve had managed to grit his teeth and bare it in stupidly stoic silence, he screams until his breath runs out. After that, his mouth gapes uselessly, his muscles too stiff from the shock to allow him to draw a breath. It goes on for what feels like forever, until Steve’s lips turn blue from lack of oxygen, until Steve starts to slump despite the pain and the electricity holding his muscles taut. Then Estulio pulls the prod away with a grin.

The smell of burnt flesh fills Danny’s nose and it’s everything he can do not to throw up on the spot. 

“You idiot,” he spits, turning his concern for Steve into anger because that’s something he can work with, something they both understand. “What is it with you and torture? If you like it that much just tell me, and I’ll buy you a real nice cattle prod, have it shipped to your house and everything.”

Steve’s head lolls as he gasps, the color of his skin finally more pink than purple. A weak smile breaks out on his face. “Only if you promise to be the one to use it on me, babe.”

Douchebag Numero Uno (aka Miguelin) chuckles. “Your boyfriend seems enthusiastic. We can shock him again if you want.”

“Fuck you. And besides, he’s not my boyfriend,” Danny snaps.

Steve, Mr. Lack of Self-Preservation, actually laughs. “He always says that.”

“Can we focus here?” Danny says, realizing only a second too late that Steve’s trying to get them to do the exact opposite of focus. 

But Estulio isn’t listening to Danny and asks, “How long you two been together?”

Danny keeps his mouth shut, but he rolls his eyes.

“Five years,” Steve says with a bloody grin, though he’s still having trouble sitting up all the way.

“Steve! We are not dating. Why do you insist on telling everyone this?” Danny protests, half annoyed, but he’s entirely playing along now.

“We’re actually married,” Steve says with a wink.

Both men chuckle, but Danny feels the lightheartedness slip away. He swallows and Steve sits up straighter, both bracing for impact but not knowing when it will come. 

“So, you gonna save your man, maricon? You know what you gotta do,” Estulio says. 

Danny turns his gaze away from Steve, too tired to keep watching him suffer when he says no again. “I don’t know where your friends hid the money. They did not tell the police. Yes, they cut a deal. No, the money was not a part of that deal,” Danny answers again.

He locks his jaw as soon as the words are out having already learned the pain of a dislocated jaw once before in his life. But the punch never lands. Instead he hears it, the sound of fist against flesh coming from across the room where Steve sits.

“Fuck you!” Danny shouts. The fear of provoking them further completely forgotten in the face of Steve’s newly split cheek and the pained groan that Steve had let slip.

“Danny-” Steve says, his voice rough.

There’s no smile this time and Danny feels that realization land like he’d been the one who’s been punched. Steve always smiles — gunshot wounds, broken bones, eighteen tons of rubble on them, flying out of North Korea with a week long hospital stay ahead of him after days of torture. The only time Danny’s ever seen Steve’s tough exterior crack was after Afghanistan, when the pain and the fear and desperation was too much, and he just curled up and cried. At least that’s what the medics said had happened before they sedated him.

“I’ll tell you where it is,” Danny says, unable to bear something like that happening again. He’s not even sure what he’s going to tell them, but he’s going to tell them something. He’ll pay for it later, he hopes to god Steve won’t, but he has to buy them time because Steve’s breathing is ragged and his eyes are rolling in his head. 

Douchebags Numero Uno and Numero Dos turn their full attention to Danny and he realizes he still doesn’t have a plan. Shit.

He opens his mouth, hoping that a perfectly formed lie will just fall out but nothing happens, and his teeth click as he shuts his mouth. The delay is too long and the horrible click-click-click of the cattle prod sounds just a second before the chair legs drag against the concrete floor when Steve’s body goes taut again. 

Danny can’t think. He knows he should be using the time this gives him to find something to give them, but all he can do is scream and swear and try to blink away the tears in his eyes before they fall. 

It stops. It stops and Danny’s gasping right along with Steve. 

“Hey, maricon. Pay attention. You can help your man if you just tell us what we want to know,” Estulio says.

Danny nods jerkily. “It’s on Moloka’i, in Kalawao, the old leper colony. There’s a church there and they cut crypts into the volcanic rock. It’s in there.”

“They buried it with the lepers?” shrieks Estulio. “Que carajo-”

 

“Callate,” Miguelin commands. “Where in the crypt exactly?”

Danny shakes his head. “I don’t know. He just said it was down there with the priest’s hand. I don’t even know what that means.”

“If you’re lying I will come back here and personally make sure you watch as I take your man apart in front of you one piece at a time. Do you understand me?”

Danny nods vigorously, but can’t look up to meet Miguelin’s eyes. Of the two of them, he’s the scarier. Danny’s ranked their captors in order of concern, Douchebags Numero Uno and Numero Dos — and while Estulio is trouble, he doesn’t have the forethought, the planning, or the intensity that Miguelin does. He’s good for taking orders, for B and Es, for making people hurt, but he’s not smart enough to do it without supervision. Danny knows without a doubt that if they fail to escape, or help doesn’t come, Miguelin plans to make good on his promise and Estulio will be delighted to help.

“I promise. That’s what he told us. I didn’t put it in the reports. I was gonna take it myself but I haven’t gotten the chance to get out there,” Danny explains. He’s babbling, the lie coalescing and the panic getting the better of him all at once, but either way Miguelin pats him on the head and stands up. 

“Good. Make yourselves comfortable. We’ll be back,” he says.

The cattle prod clicks one last time, Estulio waving it in Steve’s face for effect, before it clunks down on the table by the wall. The door slams behind them and Danny listens as the motor in the car outside finally turns over on the third try and then rattles away down the road. 

Danny starts trying to scoot his chair. It isn’t easy with his ankles ziptied to the legs, but they’ve got the rest of their lives, and isn’t that a cheery thought, so Danny takes it slow, careful not to tip over.

Steve watches quietly, his eyes glassy. Danny knows he has a concussion, he can see the way that Steve keeps listing to one side like he’s dizzy, the way one eye is dilated farther than the other, the way that he’s dry heaving but nothing comes up because it’s been so long since they ate or drank.

“Talk to me, Steve,” Danny says. “I need to know how many volts you want in that cattle prod.”

Danny’s gone about six feet in the last three minutes, but that’s six feet closer to the table where the knife that he wants is.

“Don’t you wanna take me to dinner first?” Steve asks, the ‘s’ slurred ever so slightly.

“If that’s what you need, babe. I can get you liquored up, buy you some real nice steak, we can watch the sunset out on the lanai, and then I could get a taser from the office and just zap you. Sexy times.”

Steve smiles showing his bloody teeth again. “Best date ever.”

“Glad to help,” Danny answers distractedly. He’s aware, at least on some level, that his answer doesn’t really make sense, but he’s in the groove now with the chair scooting and can’t spare the brain cells.

Steve stays quite, just letting Danny do his thing for once. It’s not five more minutes before Danny’s at the table. He can’t stand up so he can’t pick up the knife with his hands. Instead, he grabs it with his teeth and then drops it on the floor. With a sigh of resignation he tips himself over, holding his head to his opposite shoulder so as to not hit it on the floor. Then, he scoots until he can palm the blade. He only nicks his wrist about twelve times before he’s loose, and then he’s rushing to Steve’s side.

The burns look and smell worse up close, and the bruising on his cheek makes Danny wonder if the bone is broken. 

“Come on. I got you,” Danny coaxes slipping his arm carefully around Steve to hold him up.

They stagger together towards the door and out into the midday sun. Steve’s knees buckle immediately and Danny knows it’s the brightness of the light, but there’s not a lot of choices here. It’s now or never. 

Steve seems to know, and after the empty retching stops, he gets Danny to help him to his feet. 

They’re about a hundred yards down the road when Steve asks, “How’d you know all that about Kalawao?” 

“That’s what you’re concerned about?”

Steve huffs something like a laugh. “You hate it here. ‘Course I wanna know.”

“Grace had to do a paper on it for school,” Danny answers a little indignantly. It’s one thing when he says he hates Hawai’i, it’s another when Steve points it out. It makes him feel like Steve takes it personally, that by hating the place he hates the man, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. 

“‘S a good lie,” Steve commends.

“I know. Thank you,” Danny says, feeling a little less miffed than a moment before. “Now I need to make one thing very clear, Steven. We are not dating and we are not married, and I’m going to need you to stop telling people that we are.”

Steve mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like, “But we could be,” but upon clarification is, “I needed them not to hurt you.”

Danny isn’t sure that the second could be mistaken for the first, or that they are mutually exclusive, but he doesn’t push. 

“That’s stupid. You got yourself a major concussion that way,” he says instead.

“No, we needed one of us to be able to get us both out. Strategy,” Steve asserts, his slur getting worse.

Danny isn’t sure that he concurs. In fact, he definitely does not concur. Steve might be able to cite “strategy” for his reasoning, but Danny knows Steve would throw himself in front of every bullet from here to kingdom come for him. He did it to spare Danny, to take the heat for him and by proxy for Grace. 

But Danny knows that thinking with a concussion isn’t easy and Steve’s head has to hurt a lot. Talking this out is going to have to wait. The fact that Danny would be trying to make a McGarrett see sense makes Danny wonder if it’ll ever he worth bringing up, though he’s never backed down from an argument with Steve. But for now at least it’s not worth his breath, so he holds his tongue. 

“Alright, alright,” he says.

Steve grins again. “I knew you’d see it my way eventually.”

“Shut up,” Danny says. He keeps his eyes on the dirt track in front of them. Steve’s heavy weight means he has to focus, has to do for Steve now what Steve did for him before, not that being a human crutch can really make up for torture. 

The smile on Steve’s face is still there, Danny can feel it boring into his cheek as Steve waits for him to acknowledge it, but he can look at Steve later. Later he can catalogue the bruises and broken bones, the abrasions and lacerations, can count the stitches and watch the little silent blips on the heart monitor while he rests. Later, later.


End file.
